The Enigma of the In-Betweens

Recently, my neighbor introduced me to self-psychoanalysis in tandem with Internet prescriptions. I'm not a fan of either, but it seems to be working for him and has served as inspiration to pursue at least one of those through proper channels. So, I've sought out a referral for a psychiatrist or psychologist. I don't know the difference between the two, but felt that either could lead to a significant improvement to my general outlook on life. I think one can hand out prescriptions. I think that's the difference.

There is this verse in "Philosophy," which has always served as one of my personal theme songs, by Ben Folds Five that goes "I've seen that there is evil and know that there is good and the in-betweens I never understood. Won't you look at me I'm crazy, but I get the job done. Yeah, I'm crazy, but I get the job done."

So, I've finally decided to deal with the crazy part. It's worked out fine until now, but it's becoming an annoying novelty. It hinders this pursuit of normalcy that I may not even want, but wouldn't mind a taste. I'm finding that having a retirement fund, paying taxes in January, wearing black socks with decent shoes and occasionally sporting a tie for a wedding or a funeral is not the true definition of "normal" that I've always thought it is.

I imagine "normal" to be an acceptance of all that is. I'm always convinced that there is something more. Something better. Like this isn't the life that I'm supposed to be living, but I'm also convinced that perhaps the key to happiness is accepting that this is your life. Exactly what is is exactly what you are supposed to be doing. It's exactly what you are supposed to be satisfied with.

Lately it started with stopping going to the gym because honestly, who cared. Then I noticed that I was smoking more. Next I noticed that I didn't feel like putting toilet seat liners down in the work bathroom. After that it was a general lethargicness and finally all I want to do is to go home to my mancave and sleep. I get lonely, but don't want to be around anyone.

It's not as bad as that paragraph makes it sound, but it's still not happy. I still get up early on Saturdays and clean my apartment, drink coffee and listen to good music, but I'm lacking "reason." Not the reason that culminates in rational thought and good judgment, but really a question of "Why?" Why do anything? The personal satisfaction related to feats of awesomeness is dwindling. If a tree falls in the woods, it's proven that no one hears it. If I do something awesome, it's been proven that no one notices or cares. Christ, I made pudding pops one Sunday and also invented the Cashew Chicken Burrito and no one was around to share in the deliciousness. Actually, the pudding pops were kinda gross. I used banana pudding and no one likes that.

So, why? I'm sure it's all related to my environment. I'm in a toxic environment surrounded by toxic people in a work environment that could be categorized meteorologically the same way that a weatherman would describe the forecast for Seattle in November. It's gray. I've lost faith in the people that sign my checks and have been disillusioned by 9:00 AM more than most people get disillusioned all day. At home I've got a neighbor that makes me fear growing old, lonely, and creepy. I can see the cat lady waddle to the elevator with a pull-along cart full of cat food. She only lives on the second floor and has clearly given up.

Now, I haven't given up hope. Instead, I've looked for ways to improve the situation. I'm trying to eat three times a day. Definitely cut back the booze. I'm looking at new places to move to. I almost got a new job until I got Charlie Browned, which my Aunt described as a typical Hugh Voltage situation. It'd be fine if she had said Hugh, but she used my real name. I try to cook more at home and just keep myself busy, but I'm not sure where it's all going. So, perhaps this whole post is just a dry run for therapy, but regardless, I'm aware that there are some loose parts rattling around in my skull for the time being.

I was recently told by someone I've never met, yet someone that I talk to more than almost anyone in my life currently (thank you, by the way), that I look "normal" in pictures, but that just triggered a thought I had the other day while driving. I was looking in my side mirror and thinking about how it says "Objects in mirror are closer than they appear." I got home and was looking in my bathroom mirror and the statement flashed in my head again, but instead it said "Objects in mirror are farther away than they appear." Also, that person always manages to provide the pleasant surprises lately through music and books and just general pleasantries and somehow being there when the avalanche cascades. It seems that one of the few that seems to understand me, I've never met. Sounds like what some people consider God, but she talks back.

I'm sure it's just a case of the recurring Wednesdays (not good, not bad, the in-between day of the week), but I'm working on it and pretty sure I can get through it. It's mild compared to what I've made it through in the last five years and should be no sweat and involve less questionably legal activities. Yeah, I've got some scars, but should be fine moving forward.

Critical Mess

So, went on a date with my PT on Saturday. Going into it I was freaking out. Like stomach hurting stress. I woke up early Saturday morning and had a half a pot of coffee, watched soccer and tidied up my apartment. I smoked a little bit as I still had no idea what we were going to do.

She texted around Noon and said she'd be ready about 1:00. That worked. I told her to just meet me at my place and we would cab down to an art & wine festival. I sent her directions and told her just to call me when she gets into the abandoned shopping center. I got the text saying that she thought she was in an abandoned shopping center and walked out to meet her. It looked kind of foggy in the parking lot which was weird since it was about 90 degrees out. I looked to the left and one of the buildings and an adjacent tree was on fire. This was probably a sign.

I called her and told her to park closer to the apartment complex and pointed out that I called her before I called 911. We walked back to my apartment and I threw on my shoes and stuff for the art & wine thing and called a cab. I'm thinking that she thought that I didn't have a car, but even a girl is not worth a second DUI for a .04 BAC.

We got to the festival and went to lunch at this ripshit Mexican place that has awesome margartitas and we each got one. Conversation went well as I nibbled at some nachos and she got a veggie quesadilla. Topics included NASCAR, TV (Lost, Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place, 90210) and music. She liked Jeff Buckley's album Grace which really worked in her favor. She's a Cubs fan because her dad is from Chicago and she likes olde-tymey pictures from magazine covers and the like. She wants to get a tattoo of a butterfly with her mom and her sister, but hasn't because it violates some rules of her mom's people. She would rather be evacuated from an embassy by boat rather than helicopter and her life plan includes never getting a phone that receives e-mail.

It turned out to be a two plus hour lunch and she started yawning. Yeah, could've been the margarita and the heat, but this was the second date and the second time she started yawning. So, I settled up the tab and we went and got her a coffee. Grabbed a cab back to my place in which I referred to the dangerous at night park as "The Stabby Park" to the cab driver. She was not a fan of that remark. This was quickly followed by a walk her out to her car, an awkward hug and what felt like a girl making an escape.

It's been pointed out that this is the first time in 34 years that I've tried a normal courting process wihtout booze, bars or any other extraneous environmental issues to work to my advantage and I will admit that I hate it. Eventually, however, I need to do this without crutches or shortcuts. Eventually, it will have to work. In the meantime, my question is "This is how you really do it? Seriously?"

Regardless, it was good practice and has forced some super self analysis post-game. She was my kryptonite. I totally faked like I was something else the whole time because I thought that I would like her when I got to know her. If you read that sentence again, you will read volumes into how I set myself up for failure.

My problem was nailed in one statement made by the sage wisdom that is Pappy sometime ago: "You are in a hopeless cycle. If a girl likes you, you don't trust her due to poor character judgement because you don't like yourself and if she doesn't like you, you hang around to figure out why because you can't stand the fact that someone doesn't like you."

It's true for now. Scary.

Pet Smells

This weekend I had my first owning a pet experience. If you've read this before, you know that I desperately want to give up any type of hope and become a cat lady to fill all of those holes that I have in my life with hairballs and empty cans of Fancy Feast and this felt like the first step on the way there.

It started on Saturday afternoon after I burned the Canadian flag into my front while I lay by the pool and talked on the phone. I forgot to rub in the sunscreen because I was distracted with a 48 hour followup to hanging out with a girl.

I'm completely out of my element on this one. I'm used to "Hey, you're cute" then "Hey, I'm drunk" and then a phone number with a question mark after the first name that I'm never going to call. Honestly, this is the first time that I've made an effort responsibly and relatively sober and kind of hoped that something worked out. I have to be honest, it's not an incredible amount of fun, but I guess it's how the other half or 97% live. I'll try it.

Anyways, next to the pool I forgot to rub the sunblock in because I started eavesdropping on this chick that was talking about going to a Los Lonely Boys concert that night and I was really intrigued about who a typical Los Lonely Boys fan was. I thought they were always just the band that happened to be playing at the fair that day that you happened to be there.

I went back to my apartment after not learning too much about the LLB demographic. I did think that there might be a white trash element to it, but can't confirm that yet. My apartment smelled a bit foul and I thought it was the recycling or the trash so I hauled it all out and went so far as to actually attack the bins with an assortment of sprays and a roll of paper towels. Thought it was done.

I sat at my computer for a bit and could still smell it faintly. I did the obligatory nose to armpit and thought it could be me. I don't really smell ever, but didn't want to rule it out. So, showered.

A few hours later I could still smell it. I pulled everything out of the cupboards and cleaned them out. It smelled like cleaning produck at that point and covered up the gross smell.

The next morning it was in the kitchen area again. I was at a complete loss and went to Mother's Day in the city after making mixtapes for mom and sister all morning. I just relistened to one of the playlists and it's absolutely heartwrenching. It's like an audio suicide note. I'm wondering how that's going to go over and also why I was haing a Mother's Day morning funk like that.

Mother's Day was radical. My sister showed up from LA. There was a slowly escalating water arms war that eventually resulted in a broken window and blood. That's a badass Mother's Day.

Got home and walked in my door and it was an odor of death you could feel. The only thing that it could've been at this point were the floors. Vaccuumed and did the linoleum on hands and knees because I don't have a mop. The smell was still there and I went to grab my neighbor to borrow his nose because he doesn't smoke and probably has a better one.

He asked why and I told him I needed to locate the smell and he said that he had it in his apartment, too. Bingo. Light Bulb. Eureka. Uno. Tic-Tac-Toe. Yahtzee. It was a dead rat in the wall. Awesome.

So, I named it "Stinky" and will consider it domestic pet ownership until they extract it from the wall. In the meantime, this bitch is going to be tits up in Glade plug-ins and mandle burning.

Not In This Dojo

As the sun sets on my court-mandated, rehabilitative, community program that I playfully refer to as cocktail college, I thought that I would reflect on a discussion that we had last Monday. The exercise was to write down some things that you enjoyed as a child before you started drinking to assist you in tapping into that joy of life that you had as a child without involving booze. It's to prove to you that you can have a good time without boozing. You then have to pick one or a few of the things that you wrote down and try to do them in your near future or day-to-day life. Tag or a BB gun war, anyone?

Sadly, my list of things I did as a child were predominately things that I do now. There were some throwbacks in there, though, such as sidehacking and muddogging. Those would probably get me in trouble or maimed nowadays. Sidehacking is basically hanging as much of your body outside of the passenger window of a car while your friend drives erratically. Muddogging is taking snow toys to a hill of mud in the rain and treating it as if it were snow. Muddogging is brilliant.

So, we've got this venture capitalist guy in the group and he went down his list. He tries to be funny, but it always fails completely, so it's a tough read usually. Anyway, he went down his list of like chewing wood, eating Necco wafers and whatever and then said "doing karate." Motherfuckin' karate. The balls on the fucker. He then followed it up with karate as being the thing that he would like to get back into, "but it's complicated" he said.

I perked up and asked "Did you kill your sensei?" and waited for an answer.

He didn't answer. It was like he really may have killed his sensei, which we all know is never accepted in any dojo. Mercy? Not in this dojo. Failure? Not in this dojo. Killing your sensei? Not in anyone's dojo.

So now you know about proper dojo etiquette.

Would You Like Some Rain For Your Parade, Sir?

Yesterday was kinda rad. I was killing it in meetings. I was supposed to call the cute girl after work and then I got home and there was a pound of coffee on my doorstep from my neighbor that works at Starbucks. So, it's going great as I let myself into my apartment and then my neighbor takes a deep inhale off of his smoke and says "Hey, dude."

I turned and replied "What's up?" as I held my new coffee closely to my body and was teeming with anticipation of drinking the shit out of it Saturday morning.

"I started drinking again," he said "I got suspended from work and maybe fired and now I want to call that chick again to tell her that I'm sorry."

We had both cut back on our drinking, coincidentally, a week or two ago. He was drinking Gimlets at 8:30 in the morning and crying to me. Grown man crying is so uncomfortable.

I've done it. I know a man can be driven there sometimes. Christ, when I was going through my divorce I cried while watching Star Wars: Episode III and also during a Simpsons episode. It fucking happens. Anyway, he's been doing it a lot and he's 50 and has kids. I mean, there comes a point when you've got to take an assessment of the situation and realize that there is not a time and place to make a habit of cashing checks at a bar in the afternoon and drinking a gallon of vodka that comes in a plastic bottle at night. That wasn't me doing that, by the way. I have excellent credit and use direct deposit for my checks. I also only drink vodka from glass bottles and preferably with a cork.

Anyways, I started firing back at him "Dude. Number one. Start alternating those beers with fucking water. Number two. Eat something. I've got some food in my house and you can have it. Number three. You know that you are making it fucking worse by drinking that shit and you shouldn't have a drink until you have resolved all the toxic shit that you've had in your head. Down times are the worst times in the world to fucking drink."

He lost interest at that point as I stood there in disbelief of all the shit that had just come out of my mouth. It was all the right things rather than "Fuggit, dude. Let's booze."

So, he went back inside and I was feeling kinda awkward and it totally ruined my free coffee buzz. Just then, my ten year old neighbor was cruising by and yelling to his dad that he was bored. So, like a succubus that feeds on youthful exuberance, I had him over for some xbox time. We played some Rock Band and I let him play my Kozik guitroller and we were having a blast. Then his "girlfriend" came over and they nudged me out of the game to talk to his dad for a bit about high school sports. High school sports is the worst topic EVAR. I'm almost to the point of telling him that that topic is off limits, but he feeds me, so...Anyway, he went and grabbed me a Chile Colorado burrito that is off the chain for distracting his son so that he could have some dad time. Totally good tradeoff. I got a child's outlook on life and fed and he got to troll facebook. That , my friends, is true symbiosis.

Let's Get Physical Therapied

I went to physical therapy for an ankle sprain that was getting kind of unpredictable. It would just constantly roll. I would be walking and it would just go out like getting flat tired or something. You know, like when someone walks behind you and steps on the back of your shoe? That shit never gets old.

So, over a six week period I developed a crush on my physical therapist. She was a little mousey girl, kinda young and looked like she would be totally by the book, but had an appreciation for the smell of Thera-band. I like that in a girl.

By the second appointment, it was a bona fide crush. There is a hitch here, though. My personal definition of a crush involves something that is totally and completely unattainable. Like my crush on the e-surance girl. As the sessions went on she started to play along with my inane conversations and would follow me off topic of ankles and balance drills. She seemed to be genuinely enjoying hanging out for our hour a week. I chalked it up to a courteous bedside manner, but was developing a thing for her.

My ankle was pretty much rehabbed two weeks earlier than planned and I told her that we didn't need to have rehab anymore, but she told me to come back and work on my balance. That's when the conversation happened that changed everything. I was trying to balance on one leg on a foam pad with my eyes closed. It's way harder than it sounds.

I said "This is really hard. You aren't going to make me juggle now, are you?"

She said "Have you ever surfed?"

I replied with my eyes closed "No. Have you?"

She replied "No."

I just started cracking up and fell down and said back to her "Then why are we talking about it?"

I still get a kick out of that conversation.

Anyway, I finished up and she gave me her card on our last scheduled day and I was a little bummed that I wouldn't get to see her anymore. After two weeks I did the unthinkable and sent her an e-mail to her work e-mail thanking her for fixing me and then asked her out...over e-mail. It felt horrible and gross, but it fucking worked. It was also a better call than hurting myself again so that I could pay $35 a week to see her again. That felt dirty. I'm still shocked, but celebrated with one beer after I received her reply. One beer in eleven days. This is a new Hughge.

So, anyway, finally figured out how to ask a girl out when not drowning rationality and tact in ten Ketel & Sodas in a bar and then not remembering what the girl looked like the next day.

Speaking of that, as I hit that lucid state last night at 9:48 PM on Cinco De Mayo, my phone beeped letting me know that a text was coming in. You can also hear a pop in the alarm clock speakers a few seconds before this happens. I hate that. Anyway, my brain tucked away my almost dream of a dude in a Carpeteria jacket eating a cartoon taco and I checked the message. It was a number with no name asking me to go down to the bar to meet for drinks. It took me a second and I think I figured out who it was. Here's the story:

Was at the bar down the street from my house and just getting a toe in the water for getting heated. I was walking to the bathroom and saw this girl. She was a Ginger, which is normally not my type, but for some reason I ended up talking to her for a few hours and we exchanged numbers. You should never trust a ginger. It's totally documented.

About a week later, she texted me. It was my birthday and some Sangria had pretty much punched me in the face at dinner with my parents for my birthday, but I went out anyway letting her know that my charm may take a small hit due to the fight with a pitcher of Sangria, but she was game anyway. I hung out with her friends and had some drinks and everyone was getting along, but there was no connection I felt with her.

Long story short, at the end of the night, we were talking out in front of the bar and I wasn't getting a vibe from her so while we were talking I clicked my phone open and navigated to her name in my contacts directory. I then said good night and deleted her name out of my phone right in front of her and then walked away. What a prick?

Anyway, I think her name was Kendall and I think she texted last night. Her name is in my phone now as First Name: "Kendall?" Last Name: "Bar".